Thorns
by Helen Fayle
Summary: Reflections on mortality and Immortality, when the Doctor visits a dying Morgaine (takes place 20 years after "Battlefield")


Thorns  
By  
  
Helen Fayle  
  
Beltaine Eve, Gwynned  
  
Cold, scant comfort, she could give, for such a deed. What little she could bestow, she did.  
Not enough. Not ever enough.  
  
Cold, cold as death her heart, beholding the scene. No warmth in her heart for the man she held responsible for the actions of the perpetrator. Vengeance she could swear, and she did, later. No-one ever suspected her of what happened later. What could a child know of the poisons that can stop a heart without a trace?  
Not enough. Not ever enough.  
  
She watches the scene unfold from the shadows.  
  
'Sssh, beloved.' Her grandmother leans over her mother's head, cradles it in her lap, kisses the top of her head. Her mother is weeping. She never weeps. Lord Uthyr lies, unmoving, on the far side of the room, a crumpled, naked figure, no longer the powerful warlord. Not here. Not in her presence. Not in the presence of the Queen of Winter, come too late to save a daughter.  
Not dead. Not yet. But only because she has his victim to comfort.  
Warlord.  
Rapist. She watches as Viviane draws the covers of the bed over Ygraine's bruised body. Watches as her mother clings to her own; continues to cling to her, ever tighter, enough to hurt. As if seeking shelter. Too late: it had always been too late. Viviane's hand strokes the auburn hair, her fingers drifting soothingly through the soft curls.  
And the only sounds in the room are her own breathing, as she tries desperately not to cry, and the pained grunts from Uthyr  
rapist  
and her mother's sobs, now harsh and strained.  
  
And a footfall, light as air, heavy as time.  
  
Cold, cold the heart that knows only betrayal and pain. As cold as the ice plains of Breceliande.  
  
She watches from the shadows, both then, and now in the shadow of memory, as the first act of the tragedy unfolds. The Queen of Winter is the first to break the silence. 'Merlin.' The name is spat from her lips as a curse.  
'Viviane. Lady - I swear to you -' She raises her head, looks him in the eyes. Blue looking into a shifting blue/green/grey. A young/old face topped with straggling red hair. A beak of a nose. She brushes her hair out of her face, ice blond strands falling through nerveless fingers. 'Swear what, Merlin? That this was none of your doing? That you did not encourage Uthyr to this act? To the murder of Gorlois?' He looks sad, but resolute. 'To take what was destined, yes. But not like this.'  
'Destiny!' She cradles Ygraine closer. 'This is your "destiny" Merlin. A reign started with murder, lies and rape. Is this the brave new world you offer?'  
He makes as if to approach, a hand offered in conciliation, but she hisses at him, muttering a small incantation under her breath. He backs away as the air between them solidifies, keeps his distance from the barrier she has placed between them. His lined face takes on a sadder air, if such is possible.  
The Lady of the Lake remains unmoved.  
Colder. As befitted the ruler of Breceliande and its forests of ice.  
She'd learned that lesson well, over the years.  
'I never knew, until this night, what the nature of your hatred for me was, Lady.' His voice is softer. Almost, not quite, reminiscent of other times, other places.  
Viviane stands, helping Ygraine, shaking, compliant, to her feet. Supporting her at her side.  
Cold, colder, coldest: the Ice Queen now in truth.  
'Hear me, Merlin.' She speaks to the other as well, the warlord  
rapist  
murderer  
usurper now standing unsteadily at his side, fair hair sweat dampened, lust sated.  
'You will reap the consequences of this night, I swear. Breceliande will not stand to see one its own treated so. I will not stand to see one of my own treated so. Breceliande withdraws its support from Uthyr for this.'  
'Eachtar speaks for Breceliande, witch!' Uthyr spat.  
Viviane turns her head, only slightly, and holds his gaze with her own.  
Lessons learned. Pride and power made her own. Long, long, the years in the learning. And this woman - proud, defiant to the last  
I'm sorry, grandmama. I did not understand until too late.  
Lifetimes pass in the depths of such gazes.  
The warlord looks away first, and flushes.  
Shame?  
Good.  
'Eachtar speaks when I will it, Pendragon. Now be silent, your master is the one I address.' Her eyes meet the prophet's; meet, and hold. 'Use your pawns, Merlin. But know that I will oppose thee from this night onwards. And there will come a day when thou will be in my power. On that day, you will understand exactly what it is you set in motion this night, with this act.'  
He does not back down, but then, she knows now that he would not. Could not.  
Had not their roles in this been written long before she had even been born? Before even the Lady of the Lake, the Queen of Winter, and her daughter had taken their first breaths?  
  
'I will claim what is mine, Viviane.' His voice is as cold and clear as her own. She knows he speaks truly. For him, it is the past. A fate accomplished.  
  
Remembers words sobbed in the depths of Breceliande's Long Winter, behind wooden doors where done dared enter.  
  
Oh Ygraine, forgive me.  
  
Mother might have done, Grandmama. I never did.  
The Queen of Winter nods. Bows. Behind the Queen, the watcher sees the arrival of the other, the third part of the trinity, come as she should have known it would. Taking her daughter Viviane steps backwards - to Merlin's sight and Uthyr's, and the watcher's, into nothing. The third envelopes them, vanishes from High Tagel with a sigh, a breeze brushing past Merlin's cheek, a promise.  
An icy chill, lancing, deep. Bone deep.  
A promise.  
It's only then, that Merlin turns, and sees the little girl watching them from the doorway, her face pale and drawn under a cascade of red curls, green eyes staring at him - no, at Uthyr, in fear and loathing. Only then does he realise the why.  
  
December 24th, sometime in the 21st Century.  
  
She's lying in a bed, in a room not too different from her cell. The same off-white plastered walls, cracked and worn even though the building isn't that old. (It was new when they first brought her here.) But here, at least, there are sounds other than the guards walking up and down the corridor outside, or the ticking of a clock. Except that these new sounds are the steady drip of the fluids hanging in limp plastic bags from the stand at her side, and the persistent periodic beeps from the machines that they use to monitor her failing body.  
  
They've permitted her son to visit, for the first time in years. But she turns away from him when he sits beside her, not wanting to look upon his face.  
  
So unlike his father. Dark, where Arthur had been fair.  
  
He had burned like starfire. Yet her son was as a blackened ember. Not even half the man his father had been. Mordred reminded her, she saw now, of her own father: Gorlois of High Tagel. Gorlois, raven haired, dark skinned. Who'd played with her and her sisters in front of the great hearth in the hall, letting them climb all over his back and pretend to pony-ride him across the srela-fur rugs.  
  
'I don't know that I should let you in,' a woman's voice was saying. She turns her head, fighting the weakness that has spread bone-deep now through her body.  
  
Breaking down,' they whisper, when they think that she cannot overhear. Whatever kept her immortal all those years just isn't working anymore.  
  
Because I don't want it to, she could have told them, had they asked. Had she cared. But they didn't, and she didn't, and so silence held sway.  
  
'Just a few minutes,'  
  
A man's voice. Young, soft, gentle. She recognises an echo of something familiar in the tones.  
  
'Let him approach.' Her voice, so long unused, is a harsh croak in her own ears.  
  
'Five minutes, no more,' the nurse warns. She closes the door behind her, careful to leave a gap. Two inches, no more, no less.  
  
The man sits in the chair at the side of the bed, and places a bundle of red roses at her side, within reach of her hands.  
  
'Hello, Morgaine.'  
  
'Merlin?' she asks, thinking she sees something in his eyes: blue/green, this time; set in a face neither young nor old and framed by long brown hair, that curls down to his shoulders, brushing dark brown velvet.  
  
'Not exactly,' he replies.  
  
His hand reaches out, brushes hair off her face - grey now, not the red it had once been. 'I came to say goodbye,' he says simply.  
  
'To gloat,' she rasps. Her hand, withered, age-spotted, veins so denuded that the needles they put into her seem to stand out as much as her tendons, grasps the roses at her side, clenches into a fist.  
  
She feels the pricking in her palm, as a thorn pierces her skin. But she's used to that, with their barbaric medical practices.  
  
And she remembers.  
  
Midwinter, Breceliande  
  
There is a great difference between knowing the path the future will take, and walking it. Perhaps no one has ever known that more clearly than the man who stands on the balcony of the High Castle, waiting to make his entrance.  
Perhaps two others. One man that this one will never know. The other is the woman who awaits his arrival, inside.  
A high pitched, long drawn out sobbing cry splits the still, frigid night air. Summer never comes to Breceliande. A woman's voice. Followed by the wail of a new-born child. He moves towards the open window, into the antechamber beyond, careful to close the heavy window behind him. Finally, the time long awaited has arrived.  
If he grieves for the path taken to reach this point, he never shows it.  
Viviane meets him at the door to the bedchamber, an outstretched hand barring his passage. The other arm cradles a thickly wrapped bundle that squirms in her grasp. His fingers catch ice blond hair as he takes the child from her, and she pulls away, unwilling to make contact.  
For some unknown reason, this hurts him more deeply than it should. This woman has, after all, been his sworn enemy for years, from his perspective. He still doesn't know why. One day, a long time in his past/her future, they will be bound to a common purpose, but for now, for her, the wounds are too fresh.  
What will I do to you, for you to hate me so?  
The child now in his arms squirms and cries, searching for the warmth, comfort and food he cannot provide.  
'A boy,' Viviane of Breceliande, Lady of the Ice Lakes, tells him.  
'I know,' he whispers. 'And Ygraine -'  
'Tell Uthyr, he can have the child. Ygraine wants no part of him. Or of his father.'  
'She should be his queen.' Merlin says sadly. Viviane shakes her head.  
'We should not be enemies, thee and I,' he says, softly. The look she gives him is cold, remote, yet strangely vulnerable. He cannot shake the feeling that he knows her, somehow. In all the years he has known this woman, this is a feeling he has never had, this familiarity. Perhaps because now, at this point, their enmity, so new woven, has not yet built up a barrier between them?  
'You have what you came for, Merlin. Your welcome in my kingdom is over.'  
The moment passes. He nods sadly, and turns to leave, feeling his transportation awaiting him outside the fortress, unwilling for some reason to enter. No matter, he can go to her.  
  
A small figure comes into his field of vision; a little girl, no more than six or seven years old. Red-haired, green eyed. She stands in the doorway, and stares at him, raw hatred in her eyes.  
Not knowing what to say he settles for a simple 'Hello.'  
She stares at the small bundle in his arms, then up at him.  
'You're taking my brother away,' she says, accusingly.  
'Yes.' Is all he can think of to say. Which child would this be of Ygraine and Gorlois? The eldest, Morgaine?  
Of course, Morgaine.  
So this, too, was inevitable.  
How much more pain, to bring about the events he has lived through.?  
'I hate you!' she shouts, and runs to Viviane - for solace, he thinks. Then she strikes at the Queen of Winter with her small fists. 'I hate you too!' she sobs, and runs away, crying.  
He sees Viviane bow her head in pain, and for a moment, considers offering a small comfort.  
But no. what comfort can he offer? He already knows how this will end.  
The boy in his arms stirs and cries, and Merlin makes his way out of the Fortress of Ice. Outside, a dragon awaits.  
  
She watches the scene impartially, remembering that day. Remembering her mother, lying on her bed a month earlier as the women took away the soiled linen. She remembers approaching, cautiously. Remembers holding the tiny body of her brother in her arms, watching in awe as he waved tiny fingers at her, his face all red and crumpled.  
  
But he didn't cry.  
  
Nor did she, when the sorcerer came to take him away.  
  
But she remembered.  
  
December 24th, sometime in the 21st Century. Later.  
  
'I hated you for so long,' she whispers. He nods. 'You think you understand?' she asks. The effort of talking makes her cough, and he offers her a glass of water, holding it to her lips for her to drink.  
  
One time, she would have had him killed for his presumption, but now, she lets it pass. What does it matter, now? 'I think I understand,' he says, eventually. 'Do you?' There's more bitterness in her voice than she'd planned. With her free hand she reaches for, and takes hold of his. She closes long fingers over his, letting him feel her nails dig into his flesh. He doesn't make a sound. 'Let me show you.' Convulsively, her other hand tightens around the roses, and she feels the soft touch of crushed petals graze her skin, and the sharp touch of the thorns piercing her thumb.  
  
Selladon, Midsummer.  
  
She's unbound her hair, now that she's shaken off her chaperone for the afternoon. Alone in the woods, her horse tethered near the stream, she shakes out her waist length hair and dances, delighting in the feel of the sun on her skin, and in the way her hair catches the light and shines with its own, like a fire. And so caught up in the dance is she, that she doesn't see him perched high up in the tree until it is too late. 'Are you supposed to be here?' She stops, startled, and looks around. Finally she sees the branch sway, as if under a great weight, and she looks up. And there he sits, as bold as brass, staring at her. 'Are you?' she asks, letting her hand drop to the blaster at her waist. 'Of course.' He swings down and drops, landing lightly on his feet in front of her. 'My father rules this land. I'm Arthur, son of Eachtar.' He bows. 'And you are the most beautiful woman I've ever set eyes on, my lady.' He's younger than her, but by how much she struggles to say. Not much more than a boy. And she feels herself to old and too worldly to fall prey to stripling flattery. Although he is handsome, she admits. 'I am Morgaine, of Breceliande. My grandmother is your father's overlord.' She holds her head up proudly, expecting him to realise his presumption, but instead he laughs. 'Then we are kin - of a kind. My half-brother Kai would be your half brother!' 'I'm here to visit,' she offers eventually, his good mood impossible to be unmoved by. 'But I do not recall seeing you last night at dinner,' she continued. He takes her hand, and to her surprise, she lets him. 'I have been with my tutor. I only got back this morning. I wanted some time to myself, which was why I came here.' 'To sit in trees?' she teases. 'You may laugh, my lady, but you see some wonderful sights whilst perched so high.' He laughs again. 'Come, let me show you.' She wants to protest, to complain that she's too old to climb trees like a boy: she's a woman now, a squire, and soon to be a knight. Except...  
.it's a beautiful day, and he shines like the sun, even under the canopy of the forest, his hair dappled by the light falling through the shading leaves. He has to be younger than her, far too young for her to even notice, normally. .but his smile is all for her, and Breceliande is such a cold place, even in the Summer Country. And her grandmother's home is the coldest of all, and she's been so lonely.  
.granddaughter of the Lady of the Lake, she has it all.  
And has nothing.  
  
She climbs.  
  
December 24th, sometime in the 21st Century. Later.  
  
It's a small magic, this thing she does, but even this is painful, now.  
He has his eyes closed, and his youthful face bears an expression of pain, and sorrow. When he opens them again, she sees sympathy in those grey/green depths.  
'You're weak, this time, Merlin,' she tells him. He shrugs.  
'That's a matter of opinion.' She's not so close to her end that she cannot see what he tries to hide. Pain, fear, weariness. A catalogue of sorrow, loss and regret, writ large in this face as in none of the others she remembers.  
'What do you want? I grow weary,' she snaps.  
'Just to say goodbye, I suppose. Or maybe "hello".  
She laughs again. 'Never a straight answer. Always riddles and portents. One day that will catch up with you, Doctor.'  
'One day, perhaps.' He smiles. 'Not today, however.'  
'No.'  
  
The silence that follows is awkward, and she watches as he fiddles with the chain of a watch-fob. Watches, and waits. She has no need to worry about the silence. She's already a part of it.  
He still fights it.  
She sees it in his eyes.  
She laughs, and he startles at the sound, which despite her best intentions still decays into a harsh croak.  
'If not today,' she says, labouring now to get the precious air into her lungs, 'then when?'  
He doesn't meet her eyes. A pity. She'd expected more of him, even now.  
Withered, age spotted, slack skinned hands clutch the stems of the flowers. Petals fall to the white linen sheets: soft velvet drops of blood. The thorns drive deeper into her palms, and she feels the warm, sluggish trickle of her own blood run down through a clenched fist, down the dark green stems, to fall alongside the rose petals.  
Blood to blood.  
  
Samhain Eve, High Tagel. Fifteen Years later.  
  
A cold wind blows tonight, through the corridors of the castle. The tall woman in the grey armour strides towards the council chamber and pulls her verrin lined cloak tightly around her, a vain attempt to keep out the chill.  
She should not be here, not so soon. But summoned, she came. She dared not do otherwise.  
Her King awaits.  
  
He sits alone in the chamber, in the seat closest to the hearth, yet otherwise no different from the others that surround the massive girth of the table that all but fills this great hall. Unbidden, she lays her hand upon the smooth surface of the round table, feeling the pulse of the World Tree  
Yggdrasil. heart of the world.  
whose mighty bough this is.  
At least, she had thought he was alone. There was another in the room.  
Her.  
Guenevere. It takes an effort to smooth her features into a semblance of a smile, from the snarl that is her first response. For his sake, she does it.  
'My liege.' She takes refuge in formality. Bows, still somewhat awkwardly. But he believes the lie she has told about a battle wound. Knows nothing of her confinement, and so assays a rueful look of understanding before accepting her homage.  
Yet only a few months before he had knelt to her.  
'Commander.'  
In the firelight, his golden hair seems made of flame.  
'You summoned me away at a busy time, Arthur. May I ask why?' His face is troubled. She knows him well enough by now to know this. Troubled -and something else.  
Guilt?  
She turns on instinct then to look at the woman who became queen in her place: the woman placed at his side by that stormcrow Merlin.  
My place, if not for that meddling fool. Why did he tell him? Why? We were not raised as brother and sister, and the father.  
.the father is only half.  
Guenevere's normally placid face holds a smile of triumph now.  
And for the first time in many years, she feels a sense of foreboding.  
'I need your troops, Morgaine,' Arthur's voice almost breaks as his speaks.  
What has he done?  
She schools her own to calm, letting nothing slip. Perhaps later, tonight, he will come to her chambers. Perhaps then she can tell him what she has kept secret these past few months.  
'I am always yours to command, Arthur. The S'rax stand ready, as ever.'  
He nods, turning his face away again, to stare deeply into the flames.  
'There will be. trouble. when this day's work is made public.' He won't look at her, and the sense of wrong becomes almost overwhelming.  
'What have you done?' The words are out before she thinks. To the side, she hears Guenevere's hiss of disapproval. Well let the pale placid whore vent her spleen if she must. She cares not.  
'The prophecy. Merlin told me.'  
'Arthur - tell me!' She does not raise her voice, but the imperative is there. For once, however, he resists.  
It is the whore who speaks.  
'The children, Morgaine.'  
She turns her attention to the younger woman, seeing now the petty spite that lay hidden behind the vapid mask. Oh, she's misjudged this one, and badly.  
She has a hold over him now, Morgaine knows. But what?  
'Arthur's bastards. Rounded up this morning, and put to the sword.'  
Morgaine stares at her, unbelieving. 'All of them?' She turns to Artur, daring him to tell her this is some sick joke.  
It has to be. My son.  
Safe, has to be safe. She couldn't know.  
Safe, with Morgause in Orcadia. Her last born was still born the night before, but no-one to know, but the two of them. Safer for all, Morgause had said, and what life for a child with a warrior for mother? 'All.' Arthur replies. Bile rise in her thoat. He could not, surely? Her eyes turn again to the queen. But she could. Her, and that vile meddler. Colder, colder than ice her heart in that moment.  
No hope now. For her son. Gareth, Morgause had named him, for the dead, secretly buried child of her own birthing. "Beloved". Her son. Arthur's son. Her brother's son. The son this woman, with her womb more barren than the icelands of Breceliande, could never give him. She has the gift, at times, of foreknowledge. She knows the why, sees his desperate attempt to pervert the course of his fate, and knows in that moment that all he has done is fixed his path in stone. Sees her behind him in this, and behind her the man who has heralded all that is painful in her life, or so it seems. There is hate in her heart for them both, but not for her golden warrior and king. Never for him. She turns and walks out of the chamber without a backward glance, ignoring Arthur's calls for her to return.  
  
December 24th. 11.50pm.  
  
He's gone, at last. The nurse bustles in, clicks her tongue in horror at the blood on the sheets, and pries the roses from her hand. She hears the woman mutter something about "putting them in water", but ignores it. For now, the past is more immediate than the present.  
Mordred is gone, she can feel this. More: their prison will not hold him forever.  
A bitter sorrow, that she did all that she did for her son, who could never be all that she'd hoped.  
Gareth he'd been named as a child. Only later, after his betrayal, the abduction of Guenevere, had he earned the name he now bore.  
"Ill counsel" in the Old Tongue.  
She turned her head to stare at the small pile of dead flowers on the dressing table by her bed. Dead, yet still with the illusion of life clinging to them.  
Rather like the man who brought them. A shadow of his former -or later - selves.  
She felt pain in her hand, and raised it slowly, staring at the bloody pinpricks.  
Yet even dead roses have thorns.  
  
After that, there was only silence, broken by the sound of a falling petal. 


End file.
